The State has been or­dered to pay over $100,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a woman who was pros­e­cut­ed for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion as a teenag­er.

High Court Judge Christo­pher Sieuc­hand up­held Shaki­ra Bachan’s wrong­ful ar­rest, false im­pris­on­ment, and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion case in Ju­ly, but on­ly as­sessed the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion that should be paid to her late last week.

The law­suit cen­tred around an in­ci­dent which oc­curred on Au­gust 9, 2017, when Bachan, of Waller­field, Ari­ma, was 15-years-old.

Bachan went to a tat­too par­lour in Clax­ton Bay with her old­er fe­male cousins.

When they ar­rived, the tat­too artist and a man, whom they met there, left to go to the su­per­mar­ket.

Po­lice ar­rived on the scene while they were wait­ing for the duo to re­turn.

Bachan claimed that the of­fi­cers ver­bal­ly abused her and her cousins while search­ing the prop­er­ty.

Bachan and her cousin were ar­rest­ed and charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion af­ter the of­fi­cers al­leged­ly found a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na at the lo­ca­tion.

Bachan and her cousins made sev­er­al court ap­pear­ances be­fore the charge was dis­missed by a mag­is­trate due to the fail­ure of the of­fi­cer, who charged them, to at­tend suc­ces­sive hear­ings of their case.

In the law­suit, Bachan’s lawyer, Amit Ma­habir, con­tend­ed that the of­fi­cers did not have rea­son­able or prob­a­ble cause to charge her and act­ed with mal­ice in do­ing so.

Re­solv­ing the case, Jus­tice Sieuc­hand ruled that there was no ev­i­dence that the mar­i­jua­na was, in fact, found dur­ing the search.

He not­ed that the of­fi­cers did not pro­vide sta­tion di­ary ex­tracts in­di­cat­ing de­tails of the seizure or doc­u­ments prov­ing that the il­le­gal drugs were tak­en to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James for test­ing.

He al­so point­ed out that the of­fi­cers were act­ing on a war­rant to ap­pre­hend the tat­too artist’s friend and not a war­rant to search the premis­es.

While he found mi­nor in­con­sis­ten­cies with Bachan’s ev­i­dence, he not­ed that the dis­crep­an­cies may be due to her be­ing sub­ject­ed to the trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion, Jus­tice Sieuc­hand or­dered $80,000 in gen­er­al dam­ages and $15,000 in ex­em­plary dam­ages plus in­ter­est.

The State was al­so or­dered to pay Bachan $20,000 in le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the law­suit.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was rep­re­sent­ed by Ste­fan Jaikaran and Tiffany Kissoon.